


No Borderlines

by SinOfPride



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Crisis of Faith, Episode Tag, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-11
Updated: 2012-02-11
Packaged: 2017-10-30 23:30:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/337373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SinOfPride/pseuds/SinOfPride
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s no comfort in Sam’s touch now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Borderlines

**Author's Note:**

> Post 04x01- Lazarus Rising.

When Dean comes back to the motel, the room is still destroyed and his blood is on the floor. Red drops among the shards of glass reflecting the three shadows in the room. 

Bobby stands behind him, but he's silent. Dean has had no words for him since Bobby woke in that room surrounded by a thousand symbols of faith to find Dean standing alone. Bobby panicked and he had good reason, but Dean's body was unharmed. His mind was scattered and his eyes were lost, but Bobby wouldn’t know how to help those wounds. _Purification_. One drop at a time. 

Dean wanted to laugh and tell him _I've been saved_. Dean wanted to explain _an angel touched me_ , he wanted to say _God saw me_ ; Dean wanted reassurance but couldn't find it in Bobby's fear, so instead he said 'I'm good' and said 'Nothing happened' and said 'I wasn't hurt'. Only it's another lie, somehow, even if Bobby couldn't have stopped the bleeding this time. 

Dean doesn’t feel saved. Dean feels condemned. 

Sam is in front of him now. Tall and righteous, he stands in that destroyed room in judgement. Dean has been shown true light by an _angel from the Lord_ now, and in contrast, the shadows he finds in Sam's eyes are pure agony. Shadows he can't grasp, miles and miles of distance, entire worlds apart. 

It's a thousand broken mirrors and shrieking voices in his head when Sam's starts shouting, like Dean's ears have acclimated to Castiel's heavenly calling instead of his brother's fury and fear. Like Dean's out of tune, out of synch with everything he's ever loved, only to be embraced by everything he never believed in. 

Sam is dark, and he is furious. Sam is there and he is shouting, he is shaking Dean apart, and Dean doesn't shout back because he's been hollowed out by the savior that had never saved him or his before. He's been singled out by the one Dean could never pray to, the one he lost faith in when mommy promised reprieve and burnt in the pyre of her misplaced faith. 

Sam is there, but Dean isn't. Dean hasn't been here for months, before hell, before salvation. Before, he defined himself by the continued beat of Sam’s heart, by his proximity, but now his brother's touch burns like the hand branded on his skin doesn’t. Now, Dean’s meant to define himself in unknown terms; he’s floundering and Sam is no longer his anchor. Sam is his destiny in a way Dean never wanted for them; Sam is his weight, sinking them down and Dean has no wings to pull them up again, has no strength to fight for them both anymore.

There’s no comfort in Sam’s touch now. There’s no comfort anywhere, amidst the shattered mirrors. 

Bobby stops Sam from hitting him. Bobby explains in short phrases and half-truths, badly reconstructed fact from the scattered answers Dean's given him. Sam is told that Dean's okay, but he isn't. Sam is looking right at him with those shadow eyes that hurt Dean's soul, hurt where Castiel gripped him tight and branded him, hurt in the space where every mark of his life, his _other_ life, has faded. 

Dean wants to say _remember how I couldn't believe in your God and salvation?_ He wants to ask _you know why I couldn't believe then? why it hurts so much to consider it now?_ Dean wants to see understanding in Sam's eyes, see his brother in this stranger standing next to him. He wants to ask _how could you believe in them?_ , he wants to ask _do you still?_ He wants to ask Sam to teach him the word to his prayers, but he's afraid that Sam has forsaken them all. 

Dean wants to ask Sam why Dean feels more terrified of salvation than of damnation. But Sam won’t know the answers. 

In the absence of his end of the shouting match, the silence is loud, and so are Bobby's steps as he walks away over broken glass. 

Suddenly, Sam is right in front of Dean, desperate _tainted_ hands grasping his shoulders, right over Castiel's mark, pressing in like he wants his own mark on his brother's skin. He's not Sammy. He's not something else, either. Sam is saying 'Jesus, Dean', Sam is saying 'what happened with that thing?', Sam is saying 'did it hurt you?'. And Sam's hands hurt. Castiel's touch on him promised him light and purpose, while Sam's makes no promises, gives no reassurance.

Dean tells Sam 'No', tells Sam 'I'm okay', tells Sam 'I don't remember'. Asks Sam 'where were you?' and in the flicker of Sam's eyes Dean sees his shining path leading far from Sam's, so far as to need those shadow wings that delivered him from perdition. So far as to _need_ to believe or declare them both lost beyond redemption, right there in Sam's arms that had once been the steady ground Dean stood on. 

Sam's arms were his prison now and not his deliverance. Over Sam's shoulder Dean stared at the mirrors on the floor and thought he saw shadow wings moving, a safety net make-believe angels had promised Mary, one, two, three, four lifetimes ago.


End file.
